Huang’s observations took him down a rabbit hole of microSD manufacturing, a fairly epic quest to discover the truth about Kingston’s manufacturing process that, while never conclusive, had some interesting findings:

• Shopping around for Kingston cards from street vendors in China, some were obviously real and others were obvious fakes. But there were definite “irregular” grey-area models – like those that caused low yields in Chumby production – that have questionable build quality likely due to Kingston enlisting the work of crumby production partners.

• Kingston appears to buy all the actual flash storage chips inside their microSD cards from Sandisk/Toshiba, yet they often still manage to undercut the microSD prices of manufacturers like Sandisk and Samsung. Of course, Kingston needs to make up the money somewhere, and the controller chip is the only other place that’s possible. So Kingston may be stretching their thresholds of controller chip quality to make profitability possible – at minimum, the impetus is certainly there.

Of course, even if Kingston is padding supply chains with low-grade cards, I’m guessing such is more a worry for manufacturers (and purchasers of said manufacturers’ products) than the random guy picking up a new microSD card, as Kingston probably champions the transparency of our retail markets over the murky backwaters of Chinese industry. Probably. [Bunnie Studios via boingboing]

Why Solid-State Drives Are Awesome (Or At Least, Better Than Hard Drives)
To understand what’s great about SSDs, let’s start with HDDs (you know, old-fashioned hard drives). On a basic level, a hard disk drive works thusly: Inside is a magnetised recording surface called a platter that spins around really fast, with a head that zooms across disk to read and write data – think kinda like a record player, except the head never touches the surface, ’cause that would be very, very bad. So, you can see the problem with hard drives: They’re fragile (don’t drop your computer) and they’re slow to access stuff because the head has to physically move to where the data is.

With an SSD, on the other hand, we’re talking straight silicon. What’s inside is a bunch of flash memory chips and a controller running the show. There are no moving parts, so an SSD doesn’t need to start spinning, doesn’t need to physically hunt data scattered across the drive and doesn’t make a whirrrrr. The result is that it’s crazy faster than a regular hard drive in nearly every way, so you have insanely quick boot times (an old video, but it stands), application launches, random writes and almost every other measure of drive performance (writing large files excepted). For a frame of reference, General Manager of SanDisk’s SSD group, Doron Myersdorf, says an equivalent hard drive would have to spin at almost 40,000rpm to match an SSD. And, you can drop it – at least, a little.

Secrets of the SSD
Typically, what you’ve inside an SSD is a bunch of NAND flash memory chips for storage – the same stuff found in memory cards and USB thumb drives – along with a small cache of DRAM, like you’d find on most current hard drives. The DRAM is also flash memory, but the difference between the two is that the storage memory is non-volatile, meaning the data it holds won’t go poof when it loses power, while the faster DRAM is volatile memory, so “poof” is exactly what happens to DRAM data when the power goes out. That’s fine because it’s just for caching things, holding them temporarily to make the whole system work faster.

So, let’s talk a bit about flash memory itself. I’ll try to keep it straightforward and not lose you, because it’s key to the benefits and problems with solid-state storage.

Flash memory is made up of a bunch of memory cells, which are made up of transistors. There are two basic kinds of memory: With single-level cell (SLC) memory, one bit of data is stored per cell. (Bits, the basic building block of information, if you recall, have two states, 0 or 1.) The SLC type is fast as hell and lasts a long time, but it is too expensive for storing the dense amounts of data you’d want in a personal computer. SLC memory is really only used for enterprise stuff, like servers.

The solution for normal humans is multi-level cell memory. Currently, up to 4 bits can be stored per cell. “Multi-level” refers to the multiple levels of voltage in the cell used to get those extra bits in. MLC SSD drives are much cheaper than SLC but are, as I mentioned, slower, and can wear out faster than their pricier counterpart. Still, for now and going forward into the foreseeable future, all of the SSDs you could come close to owning are of the MLC variety.

The Bad Stuff
Structurally, flash memory is divided into blocks, which are broken down further into pages. And now, we get into one of the major problems with flash. While data can be read and written at the individual page level, it can only be erased at the larger block level. In other words, suppose you have a 256k block and a 4k page, and you want to erase just one page worth of data, you have to erase the whole block, and then write all the rest of the data back to the block.

This is a huge problem, for one, because MLC flash memory wears out after 10,000 cycles. Two, as the drive fills up, performance significantly degrades. (Anandtech has a pretty great illustration showing this.) That’s because without free blocks to write to, you’ve gotta go through that intensive erase and rewrite cycle, which, as you’d imagine, entails a lot of overhead. Problem numero three is that, according to SanDisk CEO Eli Harari, there’s “a brick wall” in the near future, when storage at the chip level will stop increasing in the not-too-distant future.

Mitigating the Bad Stuff
The thing is, you actually probably still want an SSD in your next computer, to make it run awesomer. Because where there are problems, there are sorta solutions. Remember how I mentioned up above the other major component in an SSD, besides the flash memory, is the controller? They’re a big part of what differentiates one company’s SSD from another. The controller is the secret sauce, as SanDisk’s Myersdorf told me. Because the game, for now, is all about managing flash better, both physically and logically. It’s about algorithms.

The first standard technique for long flash-memory life is wear levelling, which is simply not writing to the same area of the drive over and over again. Instead, the goal is to fill up the entire drive with stuff before you have to start erasing blocks, knowing that erasing will use up precious cycles. The problem of “Write amplification” – say you have a 1MB document that ends up causing 4MB worth of writes to the drive because of the whole block and pages problem described above, where you wind up reading, erasing and re-writing a bunch of extra blocks and pages – that is being lowered, says Myersdorf, because drive management is shifting from being block-based to page-based. More granular algorithms with caching and prediction means there’s less unnecessary erasing and writing.

The biggest thing is what’s called TRIM. As you probably know, when you delete something from your computer, it isn’t instantly vaporised. Your OS basically just marks the data as “Hey it’s cool to pave over this with new stuff.” Your hard drive has no real idea you deleted anything. With the TRIM function, when you delete something, the OS actually tells the SSD, “Hey you can scrub this crap.” The SSD dumps the block to a cache, wipes the pages with the stuff you want gone, and copies the stuff you want to keep back to a new block, leaving you with clean pages for the next time you want to write something to the disk. This means better performance when you’re saving new stuff, since it handles the read-erase-rewrite dance ahead of time. Windows 7 supports TRIM, and Myersdorf says Windows 8 will be even better for solid-state storage.

As for busting through the brick wall of limited storage, Toshiba, who invented NAND flash, is currently the chip capacity king. The company just announced a new 64GB NAND flash module that combines 16 4GB NAND chips. This would seem to be closing in on that wall, which we don’t want them to do, because we want the dollar-to-MB ratio to keep dropping. Myersdorf is optimistic (despite his boss’s gloomy pronouncement), “There have been several walls in history of the [flash] industry – there was transition to MLC, then three bits per cell, then four – every time there is some physical wall, that physics doesn’t allow you to pass, there is always a new shift of paradigm as to how we make the next step on the performance curve.”

OK, the big question then: When are SSDs gonna get seriously affordable? A 160GB version of one of the one of the most acclaimed SSDs, Intel’s X25, retails for $US470. OCZ’s Colossus is a verifiable brick of solid-state storage, and the 1TB model has an MSRP of $US2200, though it’s going for much more. By contrast, a 1TB WD old-fashioned hard drive is like a hundred bucks on a bad day. Myersdorf says it’s hard to say when the SSD’s dollar-to-byte ratio is going to go down absolutely, mostly because of supply and demand, but he did predict that a lot of “mainstream” laptops are gonna have 256GB SSDs in the next 18 months. Oh good, I’ll be due for a new laptop right around then.

Thanks to SanDisk for helping us out!

Right now, they’re only shipping in 8GB and 16GB capacities, which have been long available, but soon they’ll be releasing 64GB and even higher flash memory. The X4 tech doesn’t yet extend to SSDs, though it’s not really clear why, but it’s still great news for us gadget hounds. Many smartphones, especially those running Android, WinMo and BlackBerry OS, rely on microSDHC cards for memory, and a 64GB or even higher capacity card would make those much more viable as, say, multimedia machines. SanDisk assures us that the price will not skyrocket, which is a relief. X4 chips should start appearing in stores very soon. [CNET]

All that speed is expensive: The ExtremePro cards start at $US300. If you want a card that’s still damn quick but less pricey, SanDisk also has the new SanDisk extreme, which read/writes at 60MB/second and comes in 8, 16 and 32GB sizes, starting at a more manageable $US130.

SANDISK EXTREME PRO COMPACTFLASH MEMORY CARD RAISES BAR FOR PROFESSIONAL GRADE PERFORMANCE, CAPACITY AND RELIABILITY

World’s Fastest High-Capacity Memory Card Features SanDisk
Power Core Controller That Optimizes Card Endurance and
Boosts Read/Write Speed to up to 90MB/s

Milpitas, Calif., Sept. 14, 2009 – SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today introduced a new line of SanDisk Extreme® Pro™ CompactFlash® memory cards (http://tinyurl.com/mdjlmm), setting a new standard for fast, reliable, high-capacity memory cards designed for professional photographers. SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards feature a new SanDisk® Power Core Controller™, an advanced memory controller that enables lightning-fast read and write speeds of up to 90MB/s1, doubling the performance from previous SanDisk high-end camera memory cards. The cards are shipping worldwide now with storage capacities ranging from 16 gigabytes (GB)2 to 64GB.

“The new SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash line is the direct result of SanDisk’s passion, commitment, and break-through engineering innovation to provide best-in-class flash memory cards for professional photography,” said Eric Bone, vice president, retail product marketing, SanDisk. “The SanDisk Power Core Controller delivers unmatched write speed and reliability, providing photographers with a spectacular combination of performance, capacity and peace of mind that images are safely stored.”

SanDisk develops its flash controllers and memory chips together, allowing the company to perfectly match and fine-tune the two technologies throughout the testing process, resulting in high-performance products with industry-leading endurance. The SanDisk Power Core Controller brings numerous benefits to the SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards, including:

High-Performance: The SanDisk® Power Core™ Controller’s dual-lane architecture and software algorithms double card performance, enabling the SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards’ read/write speeds of up to 90MB/s over a UDMA-6 bus.

Increased Reliability: The SanDisk Power Core Controller’s firmware algorithms and 42-bit ECC engine maintain data integrity and extended card endurance through optimised wear leveling.

Simplified Design: To further increase overall card durability, the SanDisk Power Core Controller features an integrated design that requires fewer individual components on the card’s printed circuit board.

Professional-Grade Memory:
Faster read and write speeds mean more opportunities to capture the winning shot and less time spent offloading gigabytes of photos afterwards. Large storage capacity enables photographers to capture RAW format images and high-definition video clips in a single session without running out of space.

This unique combination of speed and capacity makes the new line of cards well suited for professional usage models involving large amounts of data and tight deadlines. The SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards’ 16 to 64GB capacity range offers the storage space needed to allow extended shooting sessions without having to reload.

“As a professional sports photographer, I rely on a speedy camera and high-performance SanDisk Extreme Pro cards to capture as many images as possible within a few seconds using continuous burst mode,” says Jeff Lewis, professional photographer and member of the SanDisk Extreme Team (http://tinyurl.com/kv7w6n). “How fast you can download and edit images from the cards makes a big difference when it comes to getting sports images distributed. The first images out of the media room tend to be the ones that get picked up. Speed really counts for getting selected by the top photo editors.”

Renowned for their world-class durability, SanDisk Extreme cards guarantee operation at extended temperatures ranging from minus 13 F (minus 25 C) to 185 F (85 C). SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards feature RTV Silicone coating for added protection against moisture and humidity. The cards can withstand accidental drops of up to nine feet, and carry a lifetime limited warranty.3

SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards are fully compatible with any camera, card reader or other device that supports CompactFlash cards.4 The SanDisk Extreme Pro ExpressCard™ adaptor is optimised to take advantage of the SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash card’s up to 90MB/s read speed. The reader carries an MSRP of $US49.99 and will be available in late October on SanDisk.com and at select retailers.

Pricing and Availability
SanDisk is also introducing new SanDisk Extreme CompactFlash cards (http://tinyurl.com/mdjlmm) at increased performance of previous SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash cards. The new SanDisk Extreme and SanDisk Extreme Pro cards represent the step beyond SanDisk Extreme III and SanDisk Extreme IV cards, respectively.

SanDisk Extreme CompactFlash cards will be available in capacities of 8GB to 32GB and MSRP ranging from about $US130 to $US375 in the US market, while SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards will be available in capacities of 16GB to 64GB and MSRP ranging from about $US300 to $US800 in the US market. Exact pricing for the cards will be set by retailers.

CompactFlash Card Line: SanDisk Extreme
Performance1: 60MB/s read/write speed (400x)
Available Capacity2: 8GB, 16GB, 32GB

CompactFlash Card Line: SanDisk Extreme Pro
Performance: 90MB/s read/write speed (600x)
Available Capacity: 16GB, 32GB, 64GB

About SanDisk
SanDisk Corporation is the global leader in flash memory cards, from research, manufacturing and product design to consumer branding and retail distribution. SanDisk’s product portfolio includes flash memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders; digital audio/video players; USB flash drives for consumers and the enterprise; embedded memory for mobile devices; and solid state drives for computers. SanDisk is a Silicon Valley-based S&P 500 company, with more than half its sales outside the United States.

[SanDisk]

When I say “trash,” I don’t mean it’s bad; quite the opposite, actually. But at $US40/$50/$70 for 2/4/8GB capacities, the Clip+ is very nearly disposable—you can knock it around or drop it and not feel bad—making it an excellent player for workouts or as a spare in case your main PMP runs out of juice on a long trip.

What’s New

The Clip+, unlike the Clip, packs a microSD slot for cheap expandable memory (up to 16GB at the moment). The microSD slot also supports SanDisk’s own (admittedly stupid) SlotRadio cards. The clip on the back is no longer removable, and the headphone jack has been moved to the right side of the player, away from the miniUSB port. Oh, and the control pad is now square instead of circular. That’s pretty much it for new features.

Why It’s Great

What makes the Clip+ better than competitors like the iPod Shuffle and Creative Zen Stone is surprisingly excellent sound quality. This little guy has some power behind it, sounding as good as my Zune with a pair of decent earbuds. SanDisk clearly knows what they’ve got, since the Clip+, unlike other tiny budget mp3 players, supports audiophile codecs like FLAC and OGG.

It’s got an FM radio, podcast support, and a voice recorder as well. It also auto-detects OS and will choose either MTP (Windows) or MSC (everything) when plugged in, meaning it supports every OS perfectly. The two-colour OLED screen is bright and readable, and the player itself is miniscule and feels very tough—I’ve actually dropped it twice and there’s nary a scratch on it.

Flaws

In terms of controls, it’s not ideal—I’d really like to see a dedicated Back button instead of having to hit Menu and then select “Back to Music List”, but after two minutes of toying around with the player, you’ll have it figured out. The battery life isn’t thrilling, rated at 15 hours, and I would have preferred a dedicated hold switch to the Home button playing double duty. Also, scrolling through long lists of artists or songs is a little pokey—it’s no problem if you’ve only got a few GBs of music, but if you have a filled 8GB player with a microSD card, it’ll be annoying.

Conclusion

It’s the best low-end mp3 player on the market, without question. And did I mention it costs $US50 for 4GB? That’s $US20 less than the iPod shuffle and the Clip+ has the shuffle handily beat on features and sound quality. I recommend the 4GB version—it’s worth the $US10 upgrade from 2GB, and 8GB is really more music than the little guy is built to handle. The UI’s a little dated, but it’s totally serviceable, and the player’s strengths more than make up for its drawbacks. I’ve got absolutely no hesitation about recommending the Sansa Clip+ as a workout or spare mp3 player. [SanDisk]

Tiny and rugged body

Excellent sound quality and surprisingly extensive codec support

Competitively priced

UI hasn’t evolved since previous model

The core concept hasn’t changed since it was introduced, so here’s a quick refresh: The first tier of the system is a fairly literal update to the CD, in which customers pays around $US15 for a DRM-free MP3 album on a microSD card. The second, and potentially more interesting, part of the plan is slotRadio, which upped the SD card content to 1000 songs, the price to $US40 and the DRM warning level to “Critical”. It didn’t win too many fans here, partly because it was a flawed concept, and partly because the player sucked.

And for what it’s worth, the Clip+ looks like a better piece of hardware. Alongside its slotMusic/Radio shtick, it’s a fairly standard entry-level MP3 player, with an FM radio, anywhere from 2GB to 8GB of storage, and prices from $US40 to $US70, and—this is notable, sadly—a way to navigate your music via a one-inch OLED screen. For its benefit, you should probably just think of the Clip+ as another one in the growing pile of commoditised low-end MP3 players, that just happens to support one of the most bizarre marketing ploys the music industry has ever seen. [SanDisk]

SanDisk Debuts Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player – Offering Big Sound and Tons of Features in a Tiny, Stylish Package

New microSD Card Slot Extends the Fun Indefinitely, Letting Consumers Listen to Thousands of Additional Songs in Seconds

MILPITAS, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today announced the Sansa® Clip+ MP3 player. The new Sansa Clip+ MP3 player comes equipped with a new microSD™ memory card slot that enables consumers to listen to thousands of additional songs effortlessly.

microSD Card Compatibility Offers Major Music Enjoyment:

As the successor to the best selling full-featured sub-$100 MP3 player in America, the Sansa Clip+ MP3 player is fully compatible with SanDisk slotRadio™ and slotMusic™ cards, as well as any microSD card pre-loaded with music. By sliding any of these cards into the new Sansa Clip+ memory card slot, music lovers can instantly listen to premium songs and handcrafted playlists without consuming any of the device’s onboard memory.

* slotRadio cards: SanDisk slotRadio cards (starting at $US39.99 MSRP, U.S. only) give consumers immediate access to some of their favourite styles of music, including Rock, Country, Oldies and Hip Hop/R&B. Most slotRadio cards contain 1,000 songs** featuring chart topping artists from the Billboard® charts.
* slotMusic cards: Consumers can also insert a SanDisk slotMusic card into their Sansa Clip+ MP3 player’s microSD card slot to plug-and-play the latest albums (on microSD card) from today’s hottest artists, as well as greatest hits’ compilations from past decades (cards start at $US14.99 MSRP, U.S. only). slotMusic cards make music portable and can also be used in mobile phones with a microSD card slot that can play MP3 files, computers with a microSD USB reader or an SD card adaptor, and even some car stereos with a microSD USB reader or SD card adaptor.
* Custom-loaded microSD cards: Consumers have the option of inserting a microSD card loaded with their own music library to listen to – up to 4,000 additional songs1 per 16GB card – which again adds interoperability with other devices, including mobile phones that are microSD card compatible.

Tailor made for budget and time-conscious music fans looking for the best MP3 player for the money, the Sansa Clip+ MP3 player offers outstanding sound quality; long-lasting rechargeable battery; bright, easy-to-read screen, and compact wearable design.

“We made a great product – the Sansa Clip – even better,” said Eric Bone, vice president, retail product marketing, SanDisk. “This small player packs big features, including a new microSD memory card slot that gives music lovers the ability to listen to thousands of additional songs in seconds. It’s the perfect player for travelers, busy mums, fitness buffs or anyone looking to enjoy music without the hassle of loading songs from their computer or updating playlists.”

The Sansa Clip+ MP3 player is expected to be available at sandisk.com and bestbuy.com on Aug. 31, and at other retailers nationwide on Sept. 13. The device will be available in Canada and Europe in time for the holiday season. The music player comes in a variety of capacities, including 2-gigabytes* (GB) of onboard memory for up to 500 songs1 for $US39.99 (MSRP), 4GB which holds up to 1,000 songs1 for $US49.99, and 8GB, which has an up to 2,000-song1 capacity for just $US69.99.

Consumers can show off their style by choosing the Sansa Clip+ MP3 player in red, blue or black. (Capacity and associated colours vary.)

Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player Features:

* Superior sound – one of the best sounding MP3 players on the market
* microSD expansion slot which is compatible with slotRadio and slotMusic cards and any standard microSD card
* A wearable clip for hands-free portability and effortless enjoyment of digital music on the go
* Large(1″), bright (OLED) screen with a simple user interface that makes it easy to choose playlists or songs sorted by title, artist, album, genre
* FM tuner with 40 presets for listening to sports, tuning in at the gym or your favourite music station
* Built-in microphone to record thoughts while on the go
* Equalizer mode to fine tune the listening experience
* Rechargeable, lithium ion battery with up to 15 hours of life2 – one of the most competitive battery performances for an MP3 player of its size on the market today
* Solid state flash memory for skip-free playback of music
* Support for many music download and subscription services including Rhapsody®, Napster, eMusic and others
* Designed to work seamlessly with a wide range of music formats, such as MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis and Audible files (for audio books), in both unprotected and protected files

The Sansa Clip+ MP3 player is the first Windows 7 certified MP3 player (along with the Sansa® Fuze™, Sansa® View, and Sansa® Clip portable media players). This compatibility simplifies the user experience and offers a smooth transition to the forthcoming operating system.

The Sansa Clip+ MP3 player updates SanDisk’s Sansa audio/video product family, which includes the popular full-sized Sansa Fuze MP3 player, SanDisk slotRadio™ player, SanDisk slotMusic™ player and the companion SanDisk slotRadio and slotMusic cards.

These cards are designed for HD video and are marketed with the new MacBook Pros in mind, since Apple’s new laptops finally (finally!) have SD card slots. 30MB/s is easily fast enough to comfortably boot an OS from the card slot, which we already know is possible. Plus, with all the new DSLRs capable of taking HD video, more space and faster speeds might be of considerable use to photographers and videographers. The cards will be available this August for an undisclosed price. Press release follows. [SanDisk]

SANDISK UNVEILS WORLD’S FASTEST 32GB SDHC CARD

30MB/s Read & Write Speeds and 32GB Storage Capacity Help
Photography and Video Enthusiasts Do More With Their DSLRs

32GB CardPMA, Sydney, June 25, 2009 – SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today introduced the fastest 32-gigabyte (GB)1 SDHC™ card on the market. The 32GB SanDisk Extreme® SDHC™ card at up to 30 megabytes per second (MB/s)2 read and write speeds combines industry-leading performance with massive storage capacity, helping digital photography enthusiasts utilise the advanced features of today’s DSLR cameras.

“The market for entry to mid-level DSLR cameras is growing, and SDHC is becoming the de-facto card format for these devices,” said Susan Park, director, retail product marketing, SanDisk. “Our card’s 32GB of storage and up to 30MB/s read & write speeds enable DSLR users to shoot without worrying about storage or speed limitations. SanDisk Extreme SDHC cards provide consumers with a more enjoyable user experience, letting them focus on what is really important – the images that they are capturing.”

Lightning-Fast Write Speed Captures Images Quickly
A memory card’s write speed plays a crucial role in the overall system of the camera when taking pictures in rapid succession. If a card cannot process data quickly enough then the burst mode shooting may pause unexpectedly as the card catches up to the camera. Burst mode bottlenecks can lead to missing “the” shot, especially at sporting or other fast-motion events. The SanDisk Extreme SDHC card offers maximum data-transfer rates, giving consumers a memory card fast enough to unlock the full capabilities of their DSLRs.

The 32GB SanDisk Extreme SDHC card adheres to the SD Association’s new Class 10 specification, which exceeds requirement for today’s high definition (AVCHD) video recording. The card offers a sustained write speed fast enough to ensure high-definition video recording and capacity capable of storing 160 minutes of full HD 1920×1080 pixels at 24Mb/s data transfer rate.

Big Files Require Big Storage
Recently-released DSLR camera models like the Nikon D90 and D5000 offer consumers the ability to record HD videos, producing large files that can fill lesser-capacity cards quickly. Today’s high-megapixel DSLRs also can generate massive still images like those produced in the RAW format used by professional photographers who want to take advantage of the enhanced picture quality and flexibility that RAW allows during post production.

RAW images demand up to ten times as much storage space as regular JPEG images, and when taken in rapid succession during burst mode can quickly fill smaller storage cards. The 32GB SanDisk Extreme SDHC card can store up to 2500 RAW3 images, providing photographers with piece of mind and confidence that they will not run out of space for their images.

Renowned for their world-class durability, SanDisk Extreme SDHC cards guarantee operation at extended temperatures ranging from minus 13 F (minus 25 C) to 185 F (85 C). SanDisk Extreme SDHC cards are fully compatible with any camera, card reader or other device that supports SDHC cards.

When placed in SanDisk’s new ImageMate® Multi-Card USB 2.0 reader/writer, the SanDisk Extreme SDHC card transfers images and video to a computer at rates of up to 30MB/s. The card’s fast data transfer rates enable photographers operating under tight deadlines to maximize critical workflow and enter post production as quickly as possible.

Class 10 Performance Sets a New Standard
An SD™ card’s speed Class is based on its minimum data-transfer rate, and is used to ensure high-quality video recording standards. The SD Association added Class 10 as part of the SD 3.0 specification released earlier this year. The SanDisk Extreme SDHC card’s performance exceeds the requirements of even the highest-quality AVCHD video recording device, and is currently the fastest Class 10 card in the world.

Availability:
The SanDisk Extreme SDHC 32GB cards will be shipping worldwide to major retailers in August. Also in August, the current 4, 8 and 16GB capacity SanDisk Extreme SDHC cards will be upgraded from Class 6 to Class 104.

About SanDisk:
SanDisk Corporation is the global leader in flash memory cards – from research, manufacturing and product design to consumer branding and retail distribution. SanDisk’s product portfolio includes flash memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders; digital audio/video players; USB flash drives for consumers and the enterprise; embedded memory for mobile devices; and solid state drives for computers. SanDisk (www.sandisk.com/corporate) is a Silicon Valley-based S&P 500 company with more than half its sales outside of the United States.

The short story is that the number of electrons crammed inside of flash storage now makes them less accurate as they get older—they “start to smear”—and that Harari thinks they can only double chip capacity two more times. When they go from the current 64-billion-bit chip to the 256-billion-bit (32GB) one, that’s the end.

There might be some salvation in stacking the layers, but it’s not ready for prime time yet. Check out more of the grisly bits over there: [Bits]

Thanks Thomas! And thanks to Rob, who also sent in an example ridiculous packaging today: